animal studies in attachment

• Key animal studies in attachment

  • Lorenz (1952): Imprinting in goslings
  • Harlow (1958): Contact comfort in infant monkeys
• Ethology


  The study of non-human animals in order to learn more about humans
• Zoology


  The study of animals in order to understand the animal itself
• Imprinting


  The idea that some species attach to the first moving object they see when they are born
• We can use a study of ethology to ask what we can learn about our own species by considering it
• Imprinting

  • Often found in most species of birds, particularly ducks and geese
  • Attachment must be innate
• Lorenz (1952) - Imprinting in goslings


  1. Ensured he was the first living adult the experimental group of newborn goslings were exposed to

  2. Experimental group followed Lorenz around even when in the presence of their actual goose mother
• Lorenz's study on imprinting

  1. Took a batch of 12 fertilised geese eggs

  2. Split them into two groups of six

  3. One group remained with the mother until they hatched

  4. Second group placed in incubator, Lorenz was first moving object they saw

  5. Observed that mixed groups would automatically split into original groups

  6. 'Lorenz goslings' followed him everywhere, even as adults
• Critical period

  The vital window in which attachment must happen in animate beings
• Lorenz's study


  • Supports idea of a critical period, goslings needed to imprint within 30 hours
  • Humans are more complex, attachment not likely to be such a quick process
  • Human attachment needs to take longer due to nature of human childbirth
• Harlow (1958) - Contact comfort in infant monkeys

  1. Baby monkeys deprived of food preferred a cloth 'mother' (made of wire mesh with a soft covering) to a milk-dispensing 'mother'

  2. Monkeys subsequently showed signs of maternal deprivation as they had been reared without any real contact with an adult monkey e.g. anti-social, aggressive and had no social behaviours

  3. If the monkeys experienced their first 90 days of life without real adult contact then deprivation-related damage was done
• Lorenz's study has high ecological validity as it was a field study
• Lorenz's study is highly reliable and has been repeated both experimentally and anecdotally
• Lorenz's study has small sample sizes which limits how far we can generalise the results
• Harlow's study on love in infant monkeys

  1. Baby rhesus monkeys taken from mothers at birth

  2. Placed in cage with two 'surrogate mothers': one made of cloth, one made of wire with milk bottle

  3. Monkeys spent most time with cloth mother, only went to wire mother to feed

  4. Monkeys used cloth mother as safe space to explore cage
• Harlow's study


  Concluded that infants needed comfort more than food for attachment
• Harlow's study was incredibly influential in how we saw infant-caregiver relationships
• Monkeys raised in Harlow's experiment suffered psychological damage that proved irreparable in adulthood
• Harlow's study highlighted the need for a 'responsive' caregiver
• Harlow's study is highly unethical as it caused immense psychological harm to the infant monkeys
• There are questions about the validity of Harlow's study, as it is unclear if he was really seeing 'love' for a cloth mother
• Harlow's study is not reliable as it can never, nor should be, repeated
• It would be wrong to generalise findings from animal studies to human infants without more evidence
• Some argue that monkeys are similar to humans in neurological structures, so some inference is possible
• The implications of both Lorenz and Harlow's studies are important, especially in disputing learning theory and highlighting the importance of the primary caregiver role
• Lorenz's study supports the evolutionary explanation that attachment must be innate (at least in some species)